Derek Achong

At­tor­ney Dave Per­sad has called up­on At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi to re­sign over his de­fence of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion’s han­dling of the act­ing ap­point­ment giv­en to Gary Grif­fith af­ter his sub­stan­tive term end­ed in Au­gust. 

Per­sad who was one of the first to raise is­sues over the Com­mis­sion’s fail­ure to seek Par­lia­men­tary ap­proval for the act­ing ap­point­ment as Grif­fith was not a serv­ing po­lice of­fi­cer when he was first ap­point­ed, made the state­ment in a press re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day. 

Per­sad not­ed that when he made the com­ments ear­li­er this month, Al-Rawi de­fend­ed the process used by the Com­mis­sion un­der Le­gal No­tice No. 183 of 2021, which was draft­ed by him (Al-Rawi). 

Per­sad claimed that af­ter he is­sued a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter and so­cial ac­tivist Ravi Bal­go­b­in Ma­haraj and his at­tor­ney Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, filed a law­suit over the is­sue, the Gov­ern­ment sought in­de­pen­dent le­gal ad­vice from re­tired judge Rol­ston Nel­son, SC. 

“Se­nior Coun­sel con­firmed that the act­ing ap­point­ment was il­le­gal and un­con­sti­tu­tion­al,” Per­sad said. 

Sug­gest­ing that as prin­ci­pal le­gal ad­vi­sor to the Gov­ern­ment, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al should be more mea­sured and cir­cum­spect with his re­spons­es on le­gal mat­ters of na­tion­al in­ter­est, Per­sad sug­gest­ed that Al-Rawi al­so im­prop­er­ly mis­spoke when he com­ment­ed on an in­ci­dent in­volv­ing Po­lice Ser­vice Le­gal Unit head Chris­t­ian Chan­dler and sev­er­al of­fi­cers be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed for al­leged vi­o­la­tions of COVID-19 pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions and oth­er of­fences. 

“The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, stun­ning­ly of­fered un­so­licit­ed le­gal de­fences even be­fore any charges can be prof­fered!” Per­sad said. 

“In an­oth­er coun­try, with a more po­lit­i­cal­ly con­scious pop­u­la­tion and a gov­ern­ment with a leader that ad­heres to good gov­er­nance and in­tegri­ty in pub­lic af­fairs, the Hon. At­tor­ney Gen­er­al would have had to demit of­fice, one way or the oth­er. But not so in sweet T&T!” he added. 

Per­sad al­so sug­gest­ed that the fi­as­co con­cern­ing the is­sue showed in­ter­fer­ence in the se­lec­tion process for the next Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er. 

“As the nau­se­at­ing dra­ma un­folds, it is not un­rea­son­able to hold the view that there was a cal­cu­lat­ed, or­ches­trat­ed and de­lib­er­ate at­tempt to cus­tomize the se­lec­tion process to cur­ry favour a par­tic­u­lar can­di­date,” Per­sad said. 

He claimed that one pos­i­tive re­sult of the fi­as­co is that pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions may be strength­ened as a re­sult. 

“The Ser­vice Com­mis­sions must un­der­stand that they are not a law un­to them­selves and will be held ac­count­able to the pub­lic and must con­duct their af­fairs in a trans­par­ent, fair, hu­mane and sen­si­tive man­ner,” Per­sad said.